Steven Read's adventures as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Canada Edmonton Mission.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Hey Mom and family!

Sorry I didn't email yesterday, it was Canadian Thanksgiving so the
library was closed. But here I am now! Haha so my mission president sent a letter? Which picture was it? In the airport? Man it's been a
crazy week! I'll start from the beginning, because that's where most
stories start.

So we reported to the travel office at 4am, rode a bus to Salt Lake City Airport, and then sat through security forever. Then we came to the gate and I called you guys. After we got off the phone we all
boarded our flight on a little airplane with only two rows of seats!
Maybe that's not small but I'm used to the big planes! Anyways we flew for about an hour and a half or so to Denver, which is a cool place.
We flew over all of these crazy looking mountains, and then the
mountains literally just ended and it was plains as far as you could see, and there was Denver! So we ran from our gate to catch our
flight, which had finished boarding by the time we got there and they
were calling our names. Then we sat through the 3 hour flight to Edmonton. I slept for most of it haha so it wasn't bad for me! After
we got there we sat through customs and immigration forEVER! Man we
were there for seriously like 2 hours. Then we finally got out of there and we went out and President Campbell, Sister Campbell, and the
assistants met us. We took pictures for some reason in the middle of
the airport (everyone looked at us funny haha) and then we piled all of our stuff into the trailer and rode in the mission MAV to the
mission office. We were finally fed after almost 24 hours of no food.
I almost died. They copied all of our documents and President interviewed us to make sure we could safely drive vehicles. Thank
goodness none of my accidents are on the record :) haha anyways then we drove over to President's house, hung around, got a little orientation, and then ate dinner and hung out with the assistants.

They're cool people. In fact one of them, Elder Knight, is Josh
Balaeza's (sp?) brother in law! Haha crazy right? He asked if I knew them and I said they were in my ward! His sister is Sister Balaeza.
Small world huh? He's actually training Elder Atwood now in
Lloydminster. So after dinner we wrote letters home, and then went down stairs for a devotional. It was sweet. Then the Elders went over
to the assistant's place to spend the night and the Sisters stayed at
President's place. There were 10 of us in that apartment haha it was crazy.

So the next morning we went to Transfer meeting and met our
trainers. Elder Merrell is a cool guy. He's from Springville Utah and
he's been out a little over a year. He's pretty patient with me which is nice because I don't know anything haha. I'm learning fast though.

So after that meeting we left for our apartment. We organized a little
bit, and then went shopping with the other people in our district. There's 6 of us and they're all training haha so I'm with people from
my district in the MTC it's nice. So after we shopped Elder Merrell
and I came back home and I got the low down on everyone in the area. Oh by the way I'm in South East Edmonton in an area called Southwood.
But we like to call it Sikhwood hahaha. There are SOOO many Sikhs
everywhere! But the nice thing about East Indians is that they all like to talk about God and they're really nice. They're just really
non-committal. But whatever!

Our ward is cool. It's a little smaller
than ours, but everyone's really nice. Our bishopric reminds me of the
one at home. Two older guys and one young guy haha. We've eaten dinner
at a few member's houses but not a lot. Elder Merrell's last companion
was sick for all of last transfer, and actually just went home, so they've been sitting around for while so this area is ripe for the
taking! So the members don't really know us yet. We've got a lot of
dinners lined up this week so that should help. We also don't have many people to teach either, since no teaching was done last transfer.
So we're basically white washing this area. It's good though. Like I
said it's a walking area, and I'll probably be here until at least December 28th, so I'll get to walk through a lot of winter! YES! It'll
be good though haha apparently you gain the most weight during
Christmas so I'll be able to walk it off :)

We ate Thanksgiving dinner yesterday at the Mcritchie's house and they, like everyone else so
far, fed us Thanksgiving dinner! I'm seriously gonna be sick of turkey
and mashed potatoes pretty soon. But so far I'm not complaining :) I haven't had to tract yet, and Elder Merrell does all of the street
contacting for now, but it'll be my turn soon! That's honestly my
biggest, and really my only fear. But I'll get used to it! Yesterday for Pday we went shopping at the only store that was open yesterday,
and then went and played basketball at the church! I was in heaven! I
miss playing at the church more than you could imagine. It was really fun, we played with the zone for about 3 hours then we had to leave
early for our dinner appointment.

The work's been slow so far, but
hopefully it'll pick up pretty soon. It's not cold yet. It's usually about 50 degrees outside, but give it a month and it'll be a solid 5
degrees outside! The metric system is so weird. So I refuse to use it!

Dad those pictures were sweet I miss all of your faces! But this computer won't let me send pictures through my camera. So I'll have to
print them out and send them. Gah. But anyways I'm not dead! So don't
worry about me. Only send mail to the mission office, they don't want us to get mail at our apartments for some reason. And for those of you
who have written me letters but haven't gotten a reply, it's coming I
promise, and if you have received a reply, I expect one back dang it! But yeah we're going to go eat lunch, have a good week!